As we decided not to translate our travelogues into English, I promised to post some background information to featured pictures from time to time. This one is from our visit to the US in 2011:

Near Colorado Springs, at exit 156 B of the I-25, we want to take a look at the Cadet Chapel of the Air Force Academy. The Chapel is inside a military area and so the guard wants to take a look in the trunk, but the thing he is interested most is that you have a driver's license.
The church is a modern concrete building with seventeen spires reminding one of rising Starfighters. More than once, Freya has been thinking about the symbolism of the 17 spires, until she read that originally more spires were planned, but had to be reduced to 17 due to cost reasons.

The building houses separate rooms for different religions. On the first floor is the largest vestry, a Protestant church. On the floor below is a smaller Catholic church and via a separate entrance you can reach a Jewish, a Buddhist, and a common room.
From the outside, the church looks rather cool and very modern. But as soon as you enter the upper floor the room is lit in a variety of diffuse blue, resulting from countless blue glass panels, which are accompanied by different colored panes in all imaginable colors. Wonderful. We enjoy the atmosphere of the room and spend quite some time here.
The light in the Catholic area is rather reddish due to the panes used and in the synagogue the dominating color is purple. The Buddhist space, however, is kept very simple.

Near to the church you can also take a look at the Visitor Center. But interestingly this is more about the Falcons, the local football team, than the Air Force.

If you want to see more pictures from this trip, you can find them here.

This museum was another reason to start our trip in Seattle. I found a description and some pictures in a travel-log and it was clear that we have to visit it once we are in the area. It's located next to the needle (so you can barely miss it) and if you are interested to see the museum and the needle they offer a package so you can save some money.

The museum has an outside garden with some installations and an inner area where most of the objects are arranged. It's not really huge (just the opposite to the America's Car Museum in Tacoma), but there are so many details to discover that we walked through the rooms twice. In the end we spent there more than two hours.

Taking pictures inside is a little bit tricky as it's very dark and they don't allow tripods. So boosting up your ISO is a must.

Tacoma is a city south of Seattle and most probably better known by the Sea-Tac (=Seattle Tacoma) international airport. During our visit of Seattle we went there to see the America's Car Museum.

The Museum opened in 2012 and most of the cars you can find there are donated by the family of Harold LeMay. Harold was an enthusiastic collector and the LeMay Family Collection Foundation still has so many cars that most of them are stored or on exhibition on other places.

Standing in front of the museum you might think that this is just a hangar good enough for some 20 cars, but what you see is just the above-ground part. The vast majority is below the surface. You walk down the ramps just as if you’re in a parking lot and all ramps are packed with cars. They have more than 300 on exhibition, plus motorbikes, trucks etc etc. Of course they have other automotive stuff as well. From panels showing the history of, for example, Route 66 to license plates and gas pumps. The best of that stuff was a promotion video from the early 60’s showing the future of driving – great .

Taking pictures is a little bit tricky as the museum I so packed with cars that it’s hard to find an undistracted view. So I focused quite a lot on details, especially hood ornaments.

As it was weekend and the weather was fine, we also saw quite some oldtimers driving along the waterfront of Tacoma as well. We had a great lunch there at Duke's Chowder House.

The idea for this travel was to photograph waterfalls and rainforests in the Pacific Northwest. Early June should be the right time. Not quite so cold and the notorious coastal fog should also keep within limits. Bad luck that the actual weather did not follow forecasts. Brilliant sunshine in Seattle and the Olympic NP during the day and mist or at least a closed cloud cover just in time for sunset and sunrise.

On the other hand the Northwest has to offer so many different motives. From great sceneries and lots of nature, interesting museums and beautiful old cars to a wide variety of graffiti - there is a non-ending number of motifs.

You can find the travelogue in German language here
and the album here.

Ok, the roads were not rusty and even rust colored they have been only in some places. But the topic “rust” went like a common thread through the whole holiday. Whether it was an oldtimer, a ghost town or an old production plant. But aside of that there were also caves, hot air balloons and much more to discover.

Freya agonized over her slipped disc since the beginning of the year. At some point in time she had to realize that the targeted trip to China will hardly be possible. As Juergen has plenty days of remaining vacation and Freya knows that he cannot relax at home anyway, she gave him two weeks off. Yet there was travel ban on goals she was interested too .

So the choice was on "Juergens red stones" and because of the time restriction on a rather small tour to destinations that he liked to see again and some new ones.